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Lupadian You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer.
The Nightstalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski, Good Evening, the story of a woman whose ambition and accomplishments far exceeded the expectations of her time. Eighteen Tiny Deaths follows the transformation of a young, wealthy socialite into
the mother of modern forensics. Francis Glessner Lee, born a socialite to a wealthy and influential Chicago family in the eighteen seventies, was never meant to have a career, let alone one steeped in death into pravity. Yet she developed the fascination with the investigation of violent crimes and made
it her life's work. Best known for creating the nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a series of dollhouses that appear charming until you notice the micabrel little details, an overturned chair or a blood spattered comforter, And then, of course, there are the bodies splayed out on the floor, draped over chairs, clothed in garments that Lee lovingly knit with
sowing pins. Eighteen Tiny Deaths, by official biographer Bruce Goldfarb, delves into Lee's journey from grandmother without a college degree to leading the scientific investigation of unexpected death out of the dark ear finds of centuries old techniques and into the light of the modern day.
Lee developed a system that used the nutshells dioramas to train law enforcement officers to investigate milent crimes, and her methods are still used today. Eighteen Tiny Deaths transports the reader back in time and tells the story of how one woman who should never have been allowed into the classroom she ended up teaching in changed the face of
science forever. The book they're featuring this evening is eighteen Tiny Deaths, The untold story of Francis Glessner Lee and the invention of modern forensics, with my special guest, journalist and author Bruce Goldfarb. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Bruce goldforbe Hi, Dan, thank you for having me. Thank you very much.
This is an incredible story and I'm sure the audience is going to love it. Let's I know this isn't really the order, but let's go to twenty twelve, and there's twelve or more editors as you write, touring the State of Maryland's state of the art Forensic Medical Center in Baltimore, and you were all working at a organization of a bunch of news sites that were owned then by AOL Huffington Post. Tell us about the circumstances in which you came to experience in twenty and twelve the
nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. Tell us about this whole experience and what it led to and how you came to be the author of eighteen Tiny Deaths.
Well, as you say, I had been for many years committing journalism. I had actually written about the Nutshells many years ago, in nineteen ninety two, so I had a familiarity with the Medical Examiner's Office. I had visited several times, but it was in twenty twelve when I was writing for Patch, these hyperlocal news sites, and there was a gentleman in my community that I covered who worked at
the Medical Examiner's Office. He was the director of it, named Mike Eagle, and he's a very interesting fellow and a firefighter ex military paramedic, and I just sort of, you know, had we sort of developed the Sprint relationship, and I asked Mike to the State of Maryland had just built, it was completed in twenty ten, this brand new, really state of the art, futuristic forensic medical center, and I asked Mike to arrange for a tour for us, and so we did, and we looked around and they
had this gorgeous, brightly lit autime suites and the whole biosafety suite and the laboratories, and we saw the we were in the training facility for forensic investigators that was donated by Patricia Cornwall, the novelist, and it's just basically a studio apartment where death scenes are staged for training purposes.
And he happened to mention, oh, by the way, we have this position that we're trying to fill looking for an executive assistant for the chief who would be a public information officer, and they're they're looking for somebody with a some medical experience, preferably media background, who you know, was comfortable dealing with the you know, law enforcement, government officials, the public and these sorts of things. And it honestly
sounded written for me. I couldn't think of anybody else who is more we're suited for that kind of thing. And so I applied and it did take a while or the state has quite a hiring system, but I got the job, and so I it was just just having the opportunity to be in the building where the nutshells were located was an absolute thrill. But I became friends with Jerry D Jerry DJ Howitz, who is the fellow who keeps the keeper of the nutshell secrets, and he basically asked me to you know, you can take
care of now, this is your problem. You can change the light bulbs, you can deal with it. That would be great. So I did, and I collected documents and photos. They're just it was extraordinary, and had the opportunity to really look at them very closely like I've never had before inside the cabinets and examined them and those sorts of things. So it really gave me an opportunity to
gain a you know, deep appreciation form. And also through the job, I met Francis Glesler Lee's family, her descendants, great grandchildren, uh and great nieces and nephews, and these sorts of things. They'd come and visit, and I most importantly, I met William Tyer, who was the director and curator of the Glasner House in Chicago, which is now a museum. And you know, people would they visit, they're they're just fascinated by the nutshells and they'd ask, you know, well,
you know, is there a biography? How can I learn about her? And and there wasn't one. And so, you know, Bill and I had talked about how unfortunate it was that there's so much misinformation about her online, in print, and so it became really obvious that somebody would have to write a biography. It hadn't been done. And I was in a position I sort of had a bigger picture. Not only you know, I had a sense of who she was, but how she fit into the whole issue
of the Forrenzy death investigation. So that's how I got pushed in that direction.
As you write in the book, and this is very important. Obviously, let's go back in history to the and explain the coroner system itself that was in its origins and it's a practical application in the United States.
Take us back, well, the coroner system the coroner, the sheriff, the constable, and the justice of the peace. These are all officials that are actually a whole blovers from the Middle Ages. They date from the medieval England the twelve hundreds thirteen hundreds, and the coroner in particular was he was the royal, the judicial officer, judicial representative for the crown, the monarchy, and so his main responsibility was to collect
things that were owed to the crown. He was first called a crowner, which ended up getting corrupted into corner, but that's what he was. He represented the crown, and so they did things like investigated shipwrecks and treasure troves, they seized royal fishes, and they also happened to investigate deaths, mainly to see if it were if it was a homicide or a suicide. Because there are a number of
penalties and fines. There was, uh just a whole wacky system of penalties that were uh that they had to pay for various things such as when a body was found, it had to be accompanied at all times. If you if you didn't stay with the body, uh, there was a fine for that, and you couldn't move the body, you couldn't bury it. Now, back in these days, it wasn't uncommon for it to take days or maybe even weeks for a corner to actually show up. And that and the body had they had to view the body
where it was. So it was you know, understandably quite tempting to perhaps bury it or you know, cover it with views and things. If you buried the body, there's a fine for that too. So if it turned out that the person had taken their own life, uh, suicide was a crime against the crown, and so you sacrifice, they would confiscate all your property and all your belongings
and that and that's what they did. So it wasn't the corner doesn't have to have any medical training, doesn't have to have any background in law or anything like that. They would do things by impaneling a corner's inquest and having people vote on whether it was an accident, homicide, active god or whatever.
You would also you also write that the jurors would be forced to be at that crime scene or at a crime scene to observe the body. And as you're right, there's that's problematic in and itself in terms of crime solving.
It is and back in the day of course, the inquest jury were whoever was locally there at hand. Any adult male was eligible to sit on an inquess jury. Back in the day, an adult male is age twelve or older. So you know, many of these people they may have been neighbors, they could they could have been witnesses, they could have been related to the decedents and so uh. And of course these are for the most part illiterate
farmers with no particular training, and so they were. There was a requirement it's called the uh supervisium couporus or corporus.
UH.
They were required to u pine view of the body. They were required to look at the body, really examine it and look for wounds and these sorts of things. But you know, absence any sort of medical training, there's really not too much that a person, you know, untrained person can tell just by looking at a at a dead body. So you know, it's it's not It leaves a lot to be desired.
You write about nineteen forty four and you offer a statistic one point four Americans died in nineteen forty four, and you say one in five were unexpected in sudden deaths. And of these a small fraction one or two percent were investigated by qualified medical examiners doctors again, as you say, with specialized training to determine cause and manner of death. At the time, only a few places like Boston, New York, Baltimore,
and Newark had competent medical examiners. Tell us what the state of the system, the coroner system meant in practical terms in nineteen forty four in most of the US.
For most of the American history, the United States was on the coroner system. When the North America was colonized by the Europeans, they brought over English common law with them, so we are in the corner system since the colonial days and up until the first medical examiner was in Boston in eighteen seventy seven, there was very very little progress. From eighteen seventy seven up until you know, the nineteen thirties, so nineteen forty so you know, for a long long
time progress was very, very painfully slow. And the coroner system, it really is unfortunately, you know, it's really set up for corruption, bribery, kickbacks, incompetence, indifference. The corners were often there.
In some places. They still are elected to office, the politicians, and they run for office or the appointed by political people, So the qualifications for the job really had more to do with your political loyalties and affiliations rather than competence or dedication to the job, or proficiency or those sorts of things. So that was true for most of the country. Now, you know, there were no doubt, very good, well intended, decent men of good intentions serving as coigners, doing the
best they could. But they didn't have any particular training in what we would consider forensic science. So you know, but it's still was a fun, scientific, less than satisfactory way of something as serious as determining the cause of somebody's death really merits Hello.
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As you write, let's talk about Francis Glessner Lee, her parents, the influence of her parents, her father and her mother, and the unusual or non typical childhood that she had and when she first thought she had a passion for medicine.
She was. Francis was her parents, John Jacob Gleisner and her mother, Francis Macbeth Glessner. John Jacob owned a piece of He was in the agricultural machinery business, owned a company that was a part that became part of International Harvester, and really pretty fabulously wealthy by any standard. And so they they had two children. Francis was born in eighteen seventy seven. Her older brother, George, was seven years older.
He was born just days before the Chicago fire. And so they were homeschooled, and the Glassners had the means to afford the finest instructors that they could fine, and their children were trained in music and art and dance and the classics and languages and literature and you know, the natural sciences. And they both played instruments and horseback
writing lessons and dance lessons and all these things. And so by the time that they reached the age majority, by the time they reached adulthood, they had been provided in education at fire or fire seated anything and any that would be provided in the house school. Francis didn't go beyond that. She ended up getting married at age nineteen twenty years old, and you know, was headed towards the life of a of a you know, an upper
middle class, a wealthy wife. Her brother went to Harvard Medical School, and I'm sorry he didn't go to Harvard Medical School. He was actually in the business school. But he went to Harvard and he met this a friend who was a medical student, George purchasman Grave, And she had had even as a child, she'd had an interest in medicine. She had a really rather harrowing experience having her cansels removed when she was a young child, and
that sort of peaked her interest in medical care. She went with her doctor, the country doctor up in New Hampshire and his rounds tending to people and those sorts of things, and so she really didn't have an opportunity to act on these things until much later in life. There is a story that you read online that she was forbidden from going to college by her parents and these sorts of things, which is absolutely not true. There was only one place that she wanted to go to school,
and that was Harvard Medical School. That she would have it was Harvard or nothing. They were a Harvard family, and her husband went there. Blewet Lee and her brother went to Harvard, and George McGrath went to Harvard, and even HH Richardson, who was the architect of the Chicago home. He was a Harvard guy, so they were a Harvard family, and Harvard did not admit women until nineteen forty five, so that was out of the question. So she mister changes.
She was married, as you say to this blew at Lee, but she tired of the marriage or it didn't work out in her mind and was unfulfilling, as you write, and so that led her to indulge, we'll say, or explore her artistic passions and interests. The family was very interested in art, but especially interested in music and the symphony in Chicago. Tell us what she does in terms of the interest in those regards.
Well, her mother, Francis macbeth, was an amazing, remarkable woman. She was a silver smith. She was a very talented seamstress, and she taught Francis from the earliest childhood in all sorts of needle work, sewing, knitting, crochet, and these sorts of things, and so it was like second nature to her the whole family. Francis what she's what she was, you know, she made her own clothes and these sorts of things. As an adult, she made her choke clothes
for her children, and they were very uh uh. They
were uh doleinated to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. They were big fans of the of the cultural arts, in particular, particularly the symphonic music, and so they they went to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra a lot, and they had personal relationships with the conductor and many musicians, and they often had the entire orchestra to their home for dinner and these sorts of things, and so sort of on a whim, her her mother had remarked, how wonderful would it be
just to have the orchestra here, you know, all the time, in the house. And so that got Francis to thinking to recreate the entire Chicago Symphony orchestra. Inure she did. There were ninety figures, all in the scale of one inch to one foot, and she made the clothing evening evening dress with a little carnation in the lapel, and
the musical instruments some were fabricated, some were acquired. A little small harp was made for her by a harp company, along with a little k sport and everything, and this thing ended up being eight feet long. She had a carpenter create a raised podium stairstep podium like that, and She did this entire thing, the ninety pieces in ninety days. That was three months of work. So a year or so later she did a quartet, the Flanseelee Quartet, which
was a huge deal. They're sort of the food fighters of string quartets of the day, and she did those four pieces in the same scale. And so this was, you know, this was part of her background. This is what people did miniatures with much more of a thing. Her neighbors. She had a neighbor and a friend.
You were.
Our listeners may be familiar with Narcissa Thorn the Thorn Rooms. That are these well known miniatures that are on exhibit at the Artistitute of Chicago and Francis Plesner Lee and Narcissa Thorn were friends and neighbors and contemporaries, but dalhouses and miniatures were much more within They're quite popular today, but it was much more common back then.
Now you write about her obsession to detail, and that's going to be important to everything that she does, is that a need to have incredible detail and control. And she's very very persistent and very very energetic in her pursuits. Tell us how she comes to know our brother meets George McGrath, as you her brother George Well tell us how she comes to find out more about what McGrath is all about and what he's interested in, and what their relationship develops into from that point.
It's really very quite interesting because she had, as you said, she had been married for a while. It didn't stick. It was not a happy marriage, and they separated or the divorced, and she was sort of looking for something to do. In World War One, she volunteered with a home in a settlement home in Boston for a soldiers returning from World War One, and she had the sense of,
you know, public public service. She said that she felt that she had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, and she'd never had to work a day in her life for what she had, and she felt some a need to do something for others to justify her existence. And through the nineteen twenties she operated an antique shop with her daughter, But by nineteen twenty nine she's really at a deep point in her life. Her daughter, she closed up the antique shop. Her daughter got married
and weren't doing that any longer. She had her some health problems, and her brother had died. Her only sibling, and summer of nineteen twenty nine, she was just really in a funk, and she was in the hospital recuperating from a surgical procedure at Phillip's house in Boston, and who should be there at the same time, hospitalized recuperating with George Burgess McGrath, who unfortunately had siulitis in both of his hands, a very very serious condition, and he
was being treated to that. And so they they're old friends. They hadn't seemed really hung out like that in decades, but they knew each other when she was a teenager, and there she was in middle age and it's pretty much, you know, her dearest friend at that point that she'd
no longer than anybody else. And McGrath really seemed to accept Francis in a way that nobody else did, really sort of got her and appreciated that how smart she was and well read she was, and they had all these common interests in music and arts and culture and these sorts of things. So no doubt they had some fascinating conversations. But they're recuperating their Phillips house. And now McGrath was a pathologist, and near as I can tell, he was the first pathologist to be appointed as a
medical examiner. So he was actually the first firmns a pathologist in Boston nineteen oh seven. And he had this reputation as a crime doctor. And he was the medical examiner on that the nineteen nineteen Boston molasses disaster, that horrible thing when the tank ruptured and all these people
were killed. He was the medical examiner Asacho and Vanzetti case he investigated by Bruce's first wife, she died on the mysterious circumstances and a few really high profile cases Florence Small and those sorts of things, and so you know, she was absolutely fascinated. You know, these were conversations of things of substance, you know, I mean she had been for years going to you know, social events and decorative arts society and talking about engraving and these sorts of things.
But this was, you know, things that really mattered. And she came to realize that nobody was doing this. There was this yawning need for a modern medical model of death investigation and nobody was doing it. Nobody was filling
that need. And it really did turn her mind that McGrath really planted the seed in her mind that eventually grew into supporting what was then called legal medicine, now called forensic medicine and forensic science, and she spent the rest of her life towards that purpose to modernize how dests are a sudden and unexpected or investigated in the United States.
Now she decides that this George McGrath is far ahead of his time, and she's very interested. They have these mutual, respectful conversations with her ideas being expressed, and even though she's not had a high school diploma, he's taking her very very seriously. What do they What does she decide to do with her wealth and her tenacity, What does she endeavor to do on behalf of George McGrath and this new idea about instituting a department of legal medicine.
Well, one thing that that got her going. One thing she did was she could She started reading everything she could get her hands on, and she started reading the literature what there was, and criminal justice, uh and forensic science, those sorts of things sort of getting up to speed. She was a voracious reader. I mean, this woman was amazing. She was fluence in German, French, Latin, you know, so she was reading uh texts in their original you know,
these European texts in their original language. And she started out by simply giving a money to Harvard to underwrite a profession of professorship that she had intended to be for doctor McGrath, a professor of legal medicine. And so she donated some money to to Hrvard and McGrath, by that point was in the sixties, he unfortunately had health issues and his health was declining.
And so.
She then in sitting down with doctor McGrath, and a lot of it was from Francis's own mind. She she had a real grasp, she had an ability to really integrate this information, and she really understood what was what was needed and that you know, in order to in order to move away from the corner system to a medical examiner system, you really need. It depends on three fundamental things. And the one you need to have You
need to have the manpower. You need to have doctors who are qualified and trained who are there to serve as medical examiners. You also need laws reformed and changed to abolish the corner system, abolish corner inquests, implement medical examiner system, and places that had the medical examiner system, to reform the laws, to give them more autonomy, more authority, get them involved earlier in the process, and these sorts
of things. And then the third component was that you need to address the first responders, which in this case are the police officers. They're the ones who go to death scenes. Sometimes they're the only people who are at death scenes, and so the things that happen at the scene can influence everything else that happens. They don't know, you know, don't move the body, don't pick up the weapon, don't walk through blood, you know, these sorts of things.
But there was no training, and so they're sort of clumsy and untrained, and so that was very important to teach police officers and other people who were involved in
death investigation these tools of forensic science. So she, you know, wrote down a multiple page I believe it was like nine pages long, an outline of what a Department of Legal Medicine would do, and really in those pages encapsulated an entire medical specialty area of medical practice forensic medicine and with training uh a training program undergrads, a series of lectures for undergraduates students to do medical students more familiar with post warding changes and these sorts of things
and perhaps interest them in the field to work as a medical examiner, a fellowship program to train people in forensic medicine, to work medical exembers, to do research. You need to have a laboratory. You need to have a reference library, which she was working on. You need to have a photography collection or to study from, and these sorts of things. So she had this whole vision of what this academic medical department should be. And what did
she do? And then she put her money over her mouth is and she gave the equivalent of around three point eight million dollars if you were to adjusted for inflation, to do just that and to start this whole program, and to start the national search to find somebody to replace George Broduce mcgrant and get the whole ball rolling. And so that's what she did, and she spent a great deal of her fortune towards those ends.
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slash true Murder for fifteen percent off today. Now, Bruce, we were talking about this Legal Medicine Department, Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard, her money being influential some of the many of the ideas that she wants to institute are being adopted. As a result, she doesn't like taking no for an answer. She employs as many people on her behalf to be able to get this done. This is her passion to get this done. Now, you talked about McGrath being in poor health and there needed to
be a replacement. Who does she find and what is this person's qualifications? In her mind to be able.
To do this, she convinced Harvard to put together a committee to do a search nationwide search for a candidate. And the problem was that there was, well, for one thing, there was nobody else qualified in the United States, and there was no medical school doing that kind of training
to produce a person of another forensic pathologist. And so what they thought to do is to find some very very bright young pathologists who then they could then send to Europe for a fellowship for a two year fellowship at the capitals of forensic science in Europe. And they settled on a young doctor at the Pathology Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, affiliated with the Case Western University, and by the name
of Alan Moritz. And he was third third in line at the Pathology Institute, which had been established by the Rockefeller Foundation is as a as a model of a of a pathology institute that provided all the hospitals in Cleveland and really served as a model throughout the country
as a European model of an institute. And so he had sort of hit a wall with his career there at the at the institute, and was rather intrigued by the prospect of doing something entirely new in pathology, although he wasn't really familiar with the area that you know,
the the legal medicine aspects of pathology. They through some negotiations, were able to persuade him to uproot his family from Cleveland and come to Boston, and he immediately set off on a fellowship in Europe, went to Edinburgh, all throughout you went to Paris and Egypt, Cairo, all over, and just on the on the brink of World War two, they had to sort of make a hasty retreat when
when war broke out. Uh And then he returned and implemented these these concepts and mcgrat's concepts and sort of you know, put together this curriculum at Harvard and built the program from the ground up and and began doing these things and training training young doctors in forensic medicine and and those sorts of things. So Mart's got the whole ball rolling and got it going.
Now the other ways that that brand Glessener Leith believed that to further the interest and the cause itself of this Department of Legal Medicine, she tried and met with all kinds of people to try to forward her ideas. You talk about meeting the Perry Mason author, you talk about filmmakers. Maybe we're jumping ahead a little bit, but tell us some of the pursuits that she did endeavor to try to further this cause.
We in the nineteen thirties, she visited jaeg Or Hoover, barged her way in, charmed her way in, but she got a meeting with Hoover. Hoover is notoriously unkind to the opinion of women, fired all the female special agents and forbid them from serving in that capacity, and didn't hold them in particularly high regard. But yet, you know, the this elderly wealthy woman came calling and he gave her, you know, had a meeting with her, and and she was trying to convince him. And she thought that the
FBI was in a position to be. She wanted, she wanted the FBI to do for forensic medicine what it was doing with fingerprints, to have to be a national resource sort of like the way the crime Lab is now, that it would you know, be able to serve police departments throughout the country and consulting cases and those sorts
of things. Uh. And and you know, she pointed out to to whoever at the time that the FBI really didn't have a lot of strength and legal medicine, forensic medicine, and and it's true today it's never really not where their strength is. And so he really had he at the time was developing this was just after the Lindberg baby kidnapping, So he was working in uh getting the CRAME lab off the ground, and was developing the training center.
And I just don't think that he had any interest at all in forensic medicine, and for whatever reason didn't. But she, you know, she really had. And this is what she wanted to develop at Harvard was to make a you know, a real national institute with a nationwide capability and help the police departments all throughout the country. And and that sort of thing never ever has yet to come to be but she was. It was very
very important to raise public awareness. You know, people knew and McGrath had told her this, and people knew the sorts of horrible things that went on after somebody dies, that people would be outraged and shocked and they would
demand change. So that was a really a big part of her mission was to she would you know, she was an elderly woman with health problems, but she was a relentless speaker at club all throughout New England and hitting the road and the small clubs and societies and trying to convince people and approaching newspaper people to write
about it. And she thought the Earl Sandy Gardner, you know, he was at the time the top selling author in the United States, and you know what better person to bring this to the American public if you could, if you could convince Earl Sandy Gardner and you know present that in one of his books, what that would do for the profession would just be measurable. So, you know, that was part of her mission was to reach ultimately, to reach the public.
There was a numerous conversations between doctor Morrits and and Lee, and there is talk about the difficulties that and even Doc McGrath, George McGrath had had said the same things, spells the same sentiment that there was difficulties. The one major difficulty that he discussed with francis what was that and what light bulb? What idea was set off in her mind at that time?
At that time, are you asking about how to practice observing a crime scene the scenes? Yes? And what that led to? Yes? Yeah, you know it's she had she had brought this up with McGrath, that the idea had been brought up earlier. Uh when she and Maritz Uh they at first considered doing like a two year program, doing some sort of program and police science kind of thing. It didn't get a whole lot of interest in that the police officers didn't have their requisites for that. But
they divided. They really really intense week long seminar in homicide investigation and in developing the curriculum, which has changed very little to this day. It covers all varieties of types of death and suffocation and sharp force injuries and blunt force injuries and suffocation and all these things, and drowning, observing evidence and all these things. But you know, one
of the most census for police officers. One of the most important pieces of it is the scene itself, because you don't want to tamper anything, you don't want to change anything. And you know, Morris sort of kind of you know, he said, well, you know, there's there's never a crime there's never a crime scene when you need one. And that's also an issue they just learned. You know, it would be great to take everybody to a real crime scene and use that as a practice. You can't
do that for a variety of reasons. They don't happen when you need them. You can't just trumple a group of people through a crime scene. So it's just logistically it wouldn't work. So it was a sort of an obvious answer, Well, yeah, I can make a little crime scenes, sure that you know I do that. And so, you know, she got this idea of making these little dioramas and it's basically a set of facts. She made these scenes, and the way she described it, they're sort of capturing
a moment. It's like you still frame from a motion picture. Something happened in this space, and it's captured at the moment that you, as the investigating officer, arrives at the scene. You open the door. Here's what you see, and so it creates a and it really does something that can't be done by any other medium. You really could not do that by film, by still photo. I mean, you
can show a blood stain, but that's different. I mean, you can photograph a bloodstain and see here there's a bloodstain, but that's different than looking at a room and finding it with your own eyes.
You look for it. And so.
I've talked to many, many, many homicide detectives who have been to many crime scenes, and they say that these dioramas are they're just about as good as going to a real crime scene. They're so vivified, so detailed, and so realistic, and they do something that you can't do with a real crime scene. You can't go back to a real crime scene and check something. Or you have an idea and you've been thinking about it and you want to go see if that was right, and these
sorts of things. So these are permanent facts, set of facts that can be observed from any angle for as long as you want. You're not told what to look at, you have to look at everything. It's overwhelming because you don't know what you're supposed to look at, so you have to examine every little thing. And so it really was a brilliant inspired solution to this question of how you practice observing. And so she created these dioramas, spent a fortune on them. Literally, each one of them cost
roughly what a cost to build a real house. There were anywhere between three and six thousand dollars each, which in the nineteen forties you could easily buy a house for that kind of money. And so she built, She finished around twenty of them, or so, was working against some others, and the eighteen of them now survive and are at the Medical Examiner's office and they're used for
the homicide seminar. As she designed them, and as they were intended there as as valuable today and as instructive today as they were when they were made in the mid nineteen fourties.
Incredible. You talked that Francis Glessner Lee develops real affinity for police officers, for state patrol officers especially. She gets even a police radio and starts listening to the conversations. The communications tell us a little bit about what this, how she got this affinity, what she does with it, and how it applies to this legal medicine department pursuit and training.
She did. She did. Indeed, she was when she was in her later years, she was losing her sight. She had glaucoma. She was rather isolated up in her state, up in New Hampshire, but she had her radio and she really lived through that police radio and she listened all the time, so much so that she was able to discern different personalities. She and she she got to know the different precincts UH and divisions and and and she really developed in her mind who these people were,
and she called them my boys. She she befriended police officers, you know, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, all throughout New England, Virginia and Maryland. She was very good friends and with folks in Virginia, UH and UH Massachusetts and New Hampshire and all throughout New England. And she would lavish them with gifts. She would send baskets of fruit and Christmas and smoke turkeys, and you know, she called them my boys.
And they would correspond with her and tell them the news, the things that are going on and who had a baby and these sorts of things. And they really, you know, was they were almost family. I mean, she had such affection for these for these people and treated them so
well and treated them with respect. And that was really important to her, that that that police officers and the modern police officers no longer this uneducated brute who got the coerced confessions with the third degree, but they were they were educated every gentlemen, and that they should be treated accordingly. And she had great regard, particularly for UH state police. She felt the state police they were very
well trained, very well disciplined. She didn't care too much for FBI special agents, they were a little stuffy and aloof. She had very little regard for county sheriffs, who she felt were tended to be a little less educated, UH and and less interested in improving their professional skills and those sorts of things. But state police were her. She just loved the state police, and they loved her too. I mean she was really she was practically motherly to him.
She was always Captain Lee, but was always with respect. I mean, they just they adored her and she treated her The police officers very very nicely.
She wanted them to have specific training, but realized that that they didn't have they weren't going to be turning into a science majors or get a science degree as a result. So what did she have them specifically prepared for with this training? And it's interesting that she had enough respect that she basically forced Harvard to accept the state police, which was beneath them to have these uneducated people in their facility, wasn't it.
There was a lot of objection to having cops on campus, and in fact, they drew the line at city police officers, state police. It was one thing, but she did not. They did not want Boston cops being on on the Harvard campus. And and there other faculty members thought it was inappropriate because they were not degree seeking students, and they openly said, they said, memos, why are we doing this?
But you know, she really one of her brilliant one of one of her brilliant insights is understanding that, you know, if I'm a police officer, I don't need to know how a guess chromatography instrument. I'm talking about in the modern age, I don't really need to know how that instrument works. I need to know what that instrument does. That instrument can tell me a level of of a substance in the bloodstream and that's what I need to know that as a result, it's been validated and that
is a true result. You know, I don't need to know know how DNA. I don't need to know how palm raise chain reaction works and how DNA had the magic that they're do in the test tube. But what I need to know is, you know, this is the here's what a match means, and that's the significance of it. This is what they're capable of doing. So it's teaching them the right things what they need to know. And even before you teach the police officers, you need to
teach their bosses. You need to teach the chief of police what a homicide investigator can do so they would be deployed. It was important to her that if they have this training and homicide seminar, that they not be assigned to a desk. So she always interviewed the chief of police first, and they had to buy into the concept that they're going to dedicate this person to be specially trained in homicide investigation and be used. Once they went through the training, they had a dude, they had
an obligation to apply this knowledge. So there are no no lackers, no slackers allowed. But you know, she really focused in and what does this person need to know in order to do their job better. You're not making them scientists, it's not the purpose of it. They don't need to be, but it's knowing what they need to know. And that was really you know how she focused then, because doctors, you knows, one overwhelming with facts and these sorts of things that you don't need to know all
that stuff. So that's what she did, was to prepare them with the skills that they needed to do their jobs better.
Now, this looks incredible and super promising, and of course they make inroads in other states with this idea of overturning the coroner system and replacing with a medical examiner system. But there is trouble at Harvard. Moritz has an opportunity to go back to where he wants to go ideally, and then there's a replacement, a doctor. Ford tell us what happens and what direction her dream goes towards.
Eventually, Morris left in nineteen forty nine, and you know they're they're thrown in a quandary again and more. It's actually recommended Ford for the job Ford had been. He was the medical examiner in the southern district of Suffolk County, not a grasshold job, but the one next door and sort of a known quantity. And initially, I mean his qualifications were beyond question. He was a very good pathologist.
He served in the war and had considerable experience with trauma and these sorts of things, which is a large part of forensic pathology. And uh, you know, initially things were promising, but you know, Ford and and Francis Plesner Lee were on totally different pages in terms of what they should be doing. Ford apparently didn't have much interest in the day to day administration research, you know, the
training parts. He wanted to do autopsies and these sorts of things, and but not really you know, she felt in short order that you know, it's sort of she said it was Morbon, you know, it just they're not doing anything. But what's more, Ford seemed to I guess you might say, you know, sort of a PTSD. He had some pretty horrible experiences in World War Two and
was known to have a really sharp temper. And she she finally got sick of it, and you know that she wrote them off and she can't work with them, and it was just the you know, she said the department was dying on the vine. It was just dying and there's nothing she could do about it. And ultimately, you know, she pretty much withdrew from the department except
for the police homicide seminar. She limited to her support to that, and ultimately, in the end, when she died in nineteen sixty two, she cut Herbert out of her will. So there was that, and Richard Ford unfortunately ended up taking his own life, and so that was the end of that.
There were things that angered her along the way, but she made compromises, but at some point the orders to not incorporate the McGrath Library into a general library was disobeyed. This was a island incredible collection of documents and rare books and from a thousand books to three thousand books, and so she felt and wanted to pull her her funding, but still maintained those seminars, those homicide seminars, right till right till the end, didn't she It's right, yes, she.
Did, yep, until the right up right up till months to months before death's ring. And I don't know the status of the books at her I don't know whether they are as she requested, all together in one, one section together. She wanted to look kept together as a library. She she she spent a fortune, but she got some extraordinarily rare documents and she felt very very strongly that even if they were subsumed into the medical school library, that they should be together as a collection, as a library.
So MGM wanted to focus make a film, but have Francis as part of the focus of the film, and she did not want that. She just wanted to further the cause. MGM brought in a screenwriter and it's interesting for people my age, I guess, and we talk about the one of the stars was Ricardo Montalban in this movie. Tell us a little bit about this movie.
She had an opportunity. She really sees on it. And this was pure Francis Glessingly. I mean, this is all her. She took the initiative. She had a contact with the publishing industry in New York who introduced her to the head writer at the MGM in Hollywood and sort of pitched the idea and they were intrigued. This is just after World War Two. The taste in entertainment were changing.
People didn't want these sort of idealized fantasy films. They were looking for something it was a little more realistic, and they're looking for they wanted to do the sort of semi documentary style of filmmaking. They're looking for subjects, and she pitched this idea of the you know, focusing on the medical examiner. Uh, and it had never been
done before. And you know, they as I already read these internal memos that you know, the crime stories of the tective stories, those are as old as dirt had been done every kind of variation of crime stories, but there had not to date had been a movie that focused on the medical examiner and a forensic death investigation. And so they drafted up a story that actually began the first draft the treatment or the story of the what was then called Murder at Harvard focused on uh,
Francis Glesner Lee. And there's one of the dioramas and uh, during one of the homicide seminars and the and the cameras sort of zooms in on the burn cab and then it would flash back to the Frederick Small murder that George Burgas McGrath was investigating, and then you know, tell you sort of flashback and tell the story of the legal medicine. Uh. And she said, you know, literally, she said, write me out. I don't want to be it's not about me, it's about legal medicine. Focus on
legal medicine. There had been other stories, there had been she felt, you know, that she was being used. She was willing to be used, but there were like Saturday evening posts like magazine, a bunch of you know, newspapers, and then they just they pick up on this the story of this kind of quirky grandma who makes these morbid dollhouses kind of thing. And so she was willing to be used that way if it brought if it was a hook that got some of these interests to
do a story by legal medicine. But she really, you know, that's enough. It's not about me. Do a story about legal medicine. And so she was written out and they actually did take a an actual case. The victim's name was Irene Perry and it was one of the Georgia of Alan Morritz's cases, and they they used they fictionalized that,
they changed some names to protect the innocents. And they worked in forensic anthropology, ballistics, and what was brand new at the time was forensic photography, and Alan Morts had some familiarity with that, but it was these ripped from the headlines technology, cutting edge stuff. It was the first procedural forensic drama. And so they ended up Harvard's objection.
They didn't want the title being murdered Harvard, who was in Savory and anyone I made them to do with that in the title said, they renamed it Mystery Stream and so that I don't know why. They cast Ricardo Lunchiblon as a as a cape cod sheriff and he does actually explain his accent and in the movie they had to. But it's it's really it's really pretty cool.
Absolutely Now with all this hard work, with all of her inroads into all kinds of areas that would encompass criminal justice with the police and having this crime scene death investigation as the focus, what were at the time her death, what were the inroads in what states? How many states? And overall her huge goal of transforming the US completely from the coroner system to the medical examiner system. How far from that goal did she achieve?
Well, the first medical examiner was in Boston in eighteen seventy seven. She started getting involved in nineteen twenty nine nineteen thirty. By then, if I'm not mistaken, there are really only three metropolitan areas, Boston, New York, and Newark, New Jersey. I believe there may have been in some other places. Maryland came along in nineteen thirty nine, so by nineteen forty five, I believe New Hampshire had By then it was what then around ten it was a
brand ten. It was not a huge number. Today there's something like I believe it's fourteen states that are medical examiner states. Roughly half the country as of today, half the country is on the coroner system. Most of the major metropolitan areas, the big cities tend to have medical examiners, but as parts of the country, half the population is still on the coroner system. Very very little has changed
in many places now. You know, some of the qualifications in many places, some are they do require some training. It can be done, you know, depending on how closely one works with a forensic pathologist. You have to wonder about what sort of facilities they have access to and those sorts of things. But you know, it really does not come as far as as it really should. I
don't know what to tell you it's really shocking. People think they watch a TV show like CSI, and people think that that's what happens when something when somebody dies under suspicious, sudden circumstances. They come to expect that. And the fact is that doesn't happen. It doesn't happen in most cases, and it doesn't you know, that sort of thing does not exist in a lot of the country.
This legacy, though, I have to applaud you in eighteen Tiny Deaths. Her entire life, her passion, the goals that she had, the ambitious goals, and her fascinating life. Her fascinating life has been captured in eighteen Tiny Deaths. I know she had all kinds of honorary positions when she did die. She was friends with many many people, treated many many people in law enforcement very well, and people
that went to these seminars were treated incredibly. It is a fascinating story, eighteen Tiny Deaths, the untold story of Francis Glessner Lee and the invention of modern forensics. For those people that might want to look at more information, do you have a website or is there a Facebook page for eighteen Tiny Deaths?
There is, in fact a Facebook page for eighteen Tiny Deaths. That can follow me on Facebook. I'm on Instagram as eighteen Tiny Deaths. I do have my own website, Bruce goldfreb dot com, and I have a calendar of events. I'll be doing some traveling around and hearing here and there. People are welcome to come out and see me if you'd like to. I've been a lot of interest I've gotten from forensic science, criminal justice classes, those sorts of
things college universities. If they're interested in, you know, I'd be glad to do presentations and talk with them about that, about Francis or the history of the forensic science. Yeah, I'm around.
Absolutely. Thank you so much. It's been an incredible talk with you about eighteen Tiny Deaths and the life of Francis g listener Lee, thank you very much. You have a great evening. Good night.
Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure talking with you.
Thank you, good night, good nice